After all, a professor, whether of philology, psychology, biology, or any other ology, is hardly the kind of person to whom we should appeal on such an elementary question as that of animal intelligence and language.  We might as well ask a botanist to tell us whether grass grows, or a meteorologist to tell us if it has left off raining.  If it is necessary to appeal to anyone, I should prefer the opinion of an intelligent gamekeeper to that of any professor, however learned.  The keepers, again, at the Zoological Gardens, have exceptional opportunities for studying the minds of animals—­ modified, indeed, by captivity, but still minds of animals.  Grooms, again, and dog-fanciers, are to the full as able to form an intelligent opinion on the reason and language of animals as any University Professor, and so are cat’s-meat men.  I have repeatedly asked gamekeepers and keepers at the Zoological Gardens whether animals could reason and converse with one another, and have always found myself regarded somewhat contemptuously for having even asked the question.  I once said to a friend, in the hearing of a keeper at the Zoological Gardens, that the penguin was very stupid.  The man was furious, and jumped upon me at once.  “He’s not stupid at all,” said he; “he’s very intelligent.”

Who has not seen a cat, when it wishes to go out, raise its fore paws on to the handle of the door, or as near as it can get, and look round, evidently asking someone to turn it for her?  Is it reasonable to deny that a reasoning process is going on in the cat’s mind, whereby she connects her wish with the steps necessary for its fulfilment, and also with certain invariable symbols which she knows her master or mistress will interpret?  Once, in company with a friend, I watched a cat playing with a house-fly in the window of a ground-floor room.  We were in the street, while the cat was inside.  When we came up to the window she gave us one searching look, and, having satisfied herself that we had nothing for her, went on with her game.  She knew all about the glass in the window, and was sure we could do nothing to molest her, so she treated us with absolute contempt, never even looking at us again.

The game was this.  She was to catch the fly and roll it round and round under her paw along the window-sill, but so gently as not to injure it nor prevent it from being able to fly again when she had done rolling it.  It was very early spring, and flies were scarce, in fact there was not another in the whole window.  She knew that if she crippled this one, it would not be able to amuse her further, and that she would not readily get another instead, and she liked the feel of it under her paw.  It was soft and living, and the quivering of its wings tickled the ball of her foot in a manner that she found particularly grateful; so she rolled it gently along the whole length of the window-sill.  It then became the fly’s turn.  He was to get up and fly about in the window, so as to recover himself a little; then she was to catch him again, and roll him softly all along the window-sill, as she had done before.